The Touch Of A Lover
by Machiavellian Skulduggery
Summary: A Serial Killer stalks the streets of New Vegas after having returned from a week out of Vegas. A visit from a mentally troubled 'Associate' leaves him in a moral quandary about his vocation in life. Is he truly helping the greater good by killing these people? This leaves him in a catch 22 with his next victim. Is it kinder to kill her or spare her? To live in misery, die in pain.


The Touch Of A Lover

_At The Touch Of A Lover, everybody becomes a poet - Plato_

The man rose out of lake mead very slowly. Feeling the cool water slowly being replaced by the hot sun. The Plutocrats of Vegas lay sprawled across the sand of lake Las Vegas, with attendants and hired bodyguards standing close to hand and yet just out of earshot from the scheming and drivel. He walked unsteadily towards an empty spot on the sand and collapsed onto it, ignoring the scalding grains. He flung a magazine over his face and let out a sigh full of contempt escape out the edges. In his chest he held a violence that would fit and kick in rage at the scum that surrounded him, this had once been a spot only his, that he would escape to and now they had invaded in their vast carelessness and arrogance.

Praise Of An Intelligent Servant

"Sir, it would appear that you have burned yourself"

I groaned, slowly rotating my shoulders and feeling the tightness of the skin on my shoulders and arms, the painful prickle of them being burned. Removing the magazine that had been flung on my face in such an audacious, death-or-glory manner I looked up into the tightly drawn face of my personal aide, Tiberius Grenouille Vanderfeller.

I liked Tibey, I prided myself on my talent to spot another kind of fellow and that was precisely why I had employed him. He was an older gentleman, with skin lined by harsh sun and salty weather. His top was thinning and his hair was nothing more than seldom long stands that looked as if they might shatter to touch. His eyes held the milky greyed glaze of blindness, so as a consequence he finds his way by his nose. It was something that at first glance sat noble upon his face, with an iron will that masterfully played its' cast of expression with antediluvian poise and an indifference of true nature that was full of pragmatic character. Yet upon further examination when it moved it moved with objectivity, to a specific target that it saw through its strong sense of smell. Each large bud would suck in and then swell in bloom with a predatory suction to establish the targets sent. For an evanescent moment it would strip a person bear to all their base stinks, of perfume, of the last meal, of dried in sweat and sick from the previous night and of fibre hanging pheromones. It laid all thoughts bare and pierced straight through to a mans insides and left a state of utter déshabillé.

"Whats shaking Tibes baby!". Usually this would have been met by a scowl of loathing yet his lack of impeccable service had garnered me some leeway.

"What is 'Shaking' Sir, is it being 1 O'Clock end of your vacation." He handed me a towel to cover my burnt shoulders. "Mr House has been growing impatient with your absence and Mr Conover has been getting 'That way' again."

Irritation brewed in the forefront of my mind. House had been getting to pushy lately, more wanting to throw his weight around. And Johnny Conover, fuck, don't get me started on that guy. Can't even keep his shit together for a week. Dread started to spread up my body, starting somewhere round about my knees in anticipation of returning to that palace of neon, but then it receded and was replaced by an unidentifiable form of optimism.

"Now Sir I know that you wanted to stay longer but I really must..." Tibey started, but before he could finsh I quickly leaped to my feet, startling him a quite deal in his reserved nature. I grasped him by the shoulders and shook him slightly. Usually, to any normal person, Disgust would pulse through your every faculty and ripples of the strongest self loathing and degradation would prickle the tops of hands and sliver down your vertebrae at the notion of touching Tibey. In most people that might inspire a desire to distance oneself from Tibey, yet in myself it made me feel quite fresh and his exceptional sense of smell inspired a want to excel in the ability to smell appealing. As such Tibey would bring me a regular range of pre-war perfumes from vaults and regularly cleaned and pressed crisp shirts and suits. He was usually impeccable in his due diligence and yet he had let me burn. I gave a mental sigh aimed at no one of particular note. Oh well, despite this mans exceptionality - especially given his type of character - he was still bound to that most trivial of

restrictions, humanity.

"No, your right Tibey. Lets go back to Vegas I've got the feeling something spectacular is going to happen."

"If you say so Sir" He said, voice slightly unsure and with a hint of suspicion.

With a song on my lips and under the thumb of the sun I slowly meandered my way back towards the the hotel at Camp Golf (which I had been making use of while the NCR Rangers scuttled around in Baja for who-knows-what reason). I felt so great I even went and made small talk with the scum of the earth who lined the beach while Tibey followed slightly behind. Once I was finished with that he drew close and whispered "Are you quite alright Sir?".

I merely laughed, clapped him on the back and sang.

"It's madness

To be always sitting around in sadness,

When you could be learning the steps of gladness.

You'll be happy when you can do;

Just six or seven."

I left gaps for him to join in but he didn't, he just walked rigidly with my arm around his shoulders.

"Oh I'll build a stairway to Paradise

With a new step ev'ry day !

I'm gonna get there at any price !

Stand aside, I'm on my way !

I've got the blues

And up above it's so fair.

Shoes ! Go on and carry me there !

I'll build a stairway to Paradise

With a new step ev'ry day."

In the end I resorted to whistling the tune as we approached the grand old Camp Golf country club.

When In Vegas, Do As Vegas Does

Stepping back across the threshold of the city of New Vegas I returned feeling thoroughly refreshed; wearing a crisply pressed pearled shirt that already had sweat creeping into the line of my collar and politely pooling into the pressure of my belt. My favourite striped swede jacket rested comfortably around my shoulders and that strange feeling of cheerfulness from earlier pecked at the corners of my mind that something most profitable would occur today. I walked cooly down the strip, whores plied their trade; doing perfected dances and giving grandiose compliments about the size of on watchers 'Hampton Wicks'*, con-men whispered from corners, NCR troopers patrolled; fingering their Cattle prods all the while with a look of complete boredom behind dulled eyes. The sun baked the cracked pavements and melted the plants into drooping. The feeling of cheerfulness danced across my brow and added bouncing to my steps and I came to realise what it was. Good fortune. I always knew when Lady Luck was smiling down upon me. Yet my sharpened mind and past experience pushed through that and told me what to do in these circumstances; wait. When I knew that something good was coming my way I knew to wait. That was because fortune is like a whore; she will come to you, as long as you knew when to wait, she would. Then when she comes to the right point you have to grab a hold of her and not let go. You should beat her and coerce her if need be but all the same you should always make sure to hold her down and thrust.

So, as such, I sent Tibey on ahead of me to get my room ready while I paid a little visit to a little lady among the Followers of The Apocalypse.

A Heaven Of Hell, A Hell Of Heaven

That bitch from the Followers turned out to want fuck all. She'd already done all I'd asked her for but I was willing to humour this cunt out of good will, that's what that gets you, wasted bloody time. I thought I would be going there for something to do with business, but turns out the reason that I was there was for her to 'Check up' on me and tell me I have Ginola disorder* (that isn't what she actually said but I wasn't really listening) Stupid fink, who the fuck does she think she is. Wasting my time. I was nearly late for a lunch over this crap. I made my way up to my room with the thorough feeling that my face looked like smacked arse. Then when I saw what was leaning against the door to my room I wasn't sure whether to feel perversely delighted or to want to spiral into a Great Depression. John. was leaning against my door, fiddling with a small pendant in the shape of an angel that he had gotten on a trip to New Canaan, when he came back be had adopted their entire religion. And for an impossible second looked quite dark, cool and most delphian troubled. Feeling a peculiar moment of compassion I wished him to stay like that forever, to be frozen in time at that precise moment when he looked as he really could have been as a man. Yet that most selfless moment of rare emotion to the man was dashed when I realised that would serve me no good. As if he sensed this so subtle reversing of emotion his head instantly snapped to look at me, that now incorporeal moment of dark cool mystery was shattered, to be forever lost to the ravishes of my selfishness. How quaint. It took a visible effort for him to keep at my door and not to abandon all semblances of manners and come raggedly sprinting towards me.

"Johnny! How are you doing baby"

At close range he was visibly sweating bullets despite the harsh air conditioning in the Casino and was jittering so much he had acquired a stutter. Upon such near vicinity it was blatant to see that the man was skinny. And not a good skinny either. The kind that comes from having grown up in a life of sheltered privilege where the bones would stick out just a bit too far and features that could have possibly been handsome were turned pathetic. At the sight of this revulsion would slink its' way across the top of your brain and crawl out into the air that surrounded him in a symbiotic orbit to avoid people he didn't like.

"H-hey man" he glanced behind him for no particular reason and then licked the length of his index finger on his right hand and his thumb on his left, keeping eye contact the whole time as if this were a statement. "I'm g-g-onna need ta speak to you about..." He trailed of and just widened his eyes slightly and moved his head forward in suggestion.

"Course, Johnny. No problem" I took him under my arm, squeezed slightly and steered him inside my room and sat him down on the sofa "I am at your total disposal". He sat drawn in with his hands in between his legs and shoulders slumped. His lips were drawn thin in a very tight forced smile, where the ends barely curved and it looked unnatural in how it sat on his face. Where normally lips were attractive if there were considered 'Thick Cupid Bows' these were instead crooked harps that were made of rickety old rubber that was on the verge of had been pulled so thin on his face for so many years that they had almost turned a fleshy colourlessness that had an ugly turquoise hue that had mysterious origin. It was impossible to tell whether it was creepily natural or put on for affect - that appeared not to work.

There was no modesty in him, all his emotions and inner most feelings slapped across his cheeks and burning in his temples for everyone to see. His every step would reveal something he hadn't wanted to show and for an incredibly short moment he would withdraw hissing at each step to protect what he'd shown then realising that it was already shown he would attempt a nano second of pride in it, deflate and then go back to his awkward self. This, at every step he took. You can hardly imagine. Perhaps that was why I liked him. Because I kept the real me from everybody and he was like a child in that he was helpless not to show it to everybody. Due to his skinniness his closed suit jacket was too thin at the waist and where his trousers didn't quite reach his shoes there was coirum visible between sock and trousers. Hair sprouted out over his socks and stood stark and greasy at the sides. The visible skin made it painfully obvious that the suit had been tailored for a larger man where they were too wide in diameter. Overall he was a disgusting creature, made inhabitable only by his vast inherited wealth from Brahmin ranching. But when domination is the name of the game then disgusting is the counterpart of it.

He drivelled on, I won't bore you with it but this man was a fucking mess. He nearly broke down into a glass of whiskey half way through the conversation and had to wipe off the snot that fell onto his collar. Eventually my mind was led to wandering in search of stimulation, to the smell of Hydra coming from the carpets, and the faint sound of delicate feet tapping a foxtrot in the floors below. I wondered if that was my girl down there ripping her way across the floor in merciless grace.

I then turned to picking at my nails in disinterest and then to myself; vanity is a hobby that is most enjoyable should you should sell your souls to it entire. My fingers ran through my hair, coming away with just the right amount of wax. Like many people of my kind I was the status of sophistication; styled to delight and talking using the appropriate slurs that were in style in the best social circles only. We lived lives of ease in our Casinos with wealth and materialism where snobbery was the most popular pass time, yet still it bothered me that people could not see that my face was stamped for greatness and glory. But for the time being I consoled myself in knowing that I provided a service that was invaluable to Vegas, that without me it would fall apart. To serve from the background. My current greatness is that of the humble Brahmin, they provide food, clothing, warmth, trade, wealth, transportation; each one of these are invaluable in their own ways and yet no one actually thanks their Brahmin for what they provide. And why should they? The Brahmin doesn't know any better. But the difference is that I do, as such my hard work in the preservation of this city would pay off and my greatness would rise to be greater than The Master, The Enclave, The Brotherhood of Steel and even the great Robert Edwin House.

"Uggggghhhh...mmmmmhhnnnnn".

I looked up to see whether Johnny had spunked himself mid conversation. He was fingering the edge of the seat with his ring finger, rotating it in a circle on the arm of the sofa, rubbing it in his fingers, licking it and then repeating. If I didn't mention that along with everything else wrong with Mr Johnny. , he has shit wrong with his mental cabin. He is full to the brim with shit wrong in his head but of what I know he has something which I believe the followers call OCD and Alloydia. Whatever the fuck OCD is it means that he becomes obsessed with the tiniest details to do with clothing or how he receives his drinks; whether it was pored at 45 degrees or not, which had was used in said poring and whether eye contact was to be received while it was being pored. Alloydia meant that he didn't like being touched, even the lightest tap would send him reeling as if he were covered in burns. It was really a miracle that he was here wearing clothes as that was mostly too painful for him, he would often just retreat to his room and sit, days on end, receiving minimal human contact, reading pre-war books; stark naked. Using hired aides to come and do business in his stead he rarely saw the sun. In fact the was a rumour that when he had recently moved his room for the first time in seven years, new clients had entered to find the curtains in his room not having been opened for the seven years that he had been there to where they had rotted through. In any case I thought that I had better check if he was okay.

"Johnny, baby. You alright?" He looked up and had distress in the now downward curve of his lips and the straining of his eyes.

"These Chairs" he leant forward, his voice becoming little more than a slightly husky inquisitive whisper "When was the last time that these were cleaned..." He leant back and started his ritual again for rubbing the arm. I felt like yelling at him "Who the fuck knows" but dealing with Johnny was like with a child, small corrections. So bringing my voice down to the same level that is had been at and said.

"Gee, Johnny I don't know that"

His eyes turned to me again, still ridden in deep distress. He lent in again.

"I don't think that they are clean you know"

"Well Johnny, nothing is ever clean but we try our best right"

He nodded, but the distress didn't leave.

"I've done some bad shit man, sum real bad shit, I'm going uh hell, I know it" he was snivelling now.

It was peculiar that even two hundred years after the world had taken a dip into a radioactive lake and conventional morality had skipped off the cliff when the crazies had taken over, people were still preoccupied the the most trivial (yet once important) of issues, the choice between a good and an evil life. Yet even once having chosen one they would doubt their vocation and fret over whether the other would be better. I found myself free from this argument and quite fancied the idea that I could walk the fine line between the two, being able to dip however deep into each one that I saw to be pleasurable. I even heard some people from the White Glove society discussing the definition of Justice (especially when given to dishing it out to raiders or tribals), the banality of it all!

"Oh I am sure Christ wept Johnny"

He stormed upwards at that, his physical presence seeming to grow taller and the room to darken to his temper.

"Never take the lords name in vain!" I did nothing, merely smiled. This was where Johnny was at his most interesting, it made it worth all his peculiarities.

A tension followed, but eventually he shrunk back down, looking thoroughly pissed again.

"Look Johnny if you were talking about the stuff then..."

"No, not that man." His voice changed to a whisper that was only just audible, his knees were drawn up to his chin. "Not that"

"Then what?"

He looked up out of the corner of his eyes, meeting mine "You know what I mean" He snapped.

I grasped his face then, yanking it up and screamed at him "Did you cover yourself?, Hm? Arrogant or Mercy?" for a few seconds he just whimpered and when I screamed at him again he shat out a feeble "Yes".

Feeling a great relief I let him fall back and slumped back onto the table in front of him. Giving him a moment to get his whimpering done I slapped him on the knee and whispered "Good Johnny, good".

By some divine providence a knock came at the door to save me for a brief moment from Johnnys' weirdness. Leaping up from my seat I called.

"Who is it?"

"We have some Whiskey from Mr mumble mumble" she had scoffed the last words and were dampened by Johnny whining again, it had sounded like she said Torini.

I nodded as is this made sense, opened the door and let the waitress in and told her to set I down on the bar so I could poor a glass. When she turned to leave something caught Johnnys' eye and caused him to send his chair flying to the floor - him with it - scramble to his feet and run at the serving girl.

"There, right there. Do you see it? How could someone let this happen? This must be set right at once" he started to squirm and writhe on the spot as he said this "I simply won't let this happen" he looked at ,e demandingly then back at the girl "This is your responsibility, if you shan't fix it I h-have to leave"

Moving quickly I bid the girl to leave, sat Johnny down, put and drink in his hand and started to speak to him rapidly and excitedly.

Anything to get him to calm down. All the while he had been shouting at the serving girl he had been intensely staring at her tits. When I asked him what was wrong he said.

"The fabric of her blouse man. It was wrong, it made it look like she had two nipples. Two nipples, two nipples, two nipples, two nipples" he descended into just repeating 'Two Nipples" again and again. Each time differently as if he were proposing something or making an argument until it just descended into a stream of "TwoNipplesTwoNipplesTwoNipplesTwoNipplesTwoNipplesTwoNipplesTwoNipplesTwoNipplesTwoNipplesTwoNipplesTwoNipples"

In the end I slapped him. That didn't work, I put a drink back in his mouth. That didn't work, and just before I got to the point of strangling him he stood up very calmly - a different man entirely - and said "I'm going to change my life, forever. To seek redemption in the view of The Lord." I sat silently nodding my head. Then my hand lashed out catching him just behind the eye, my nails drawing blood that trickled into the corner of his mouth. He didn't move, say anything or show any emotion that would register what had happened.

"I realise that this must come as a surprise to you and not what you want to hear, but it is what I, and you, must do to seek entrance into heaven" I nodded again, and launched a hook into his nose and an uppercut into his throat. Again he showed no sign that anything had happened besides the fact that his nose was now touching his right cheek and blood was now in a spray up his face and down his shirt. His adams apple also seemed to have gotten stuck slightly at the back of his neck so the front was turning a deep red colour. Turning on his heel he walked to the door and said "I must go now. I will send you a memorandum tomorrow on how you can fix that nipple problem" he went to walk out the door but hesitated "Your pure evil, do you know that. The most malignant, concentrated malice inhabits your eternal soul from what you do - and have made me do - in this city, to its people. It is disgusting" I threw my whiskey glass at the door near his face: he didn't even flinch. He had been possessed by a supreme calmness that I had never seen in him before. And what was this talk of evil? Complete shit. "Fine I said, if that is the way you want to play it you god damn fink" my voice flat and even "Know that you have lost any interest as a friend and aren't welcome in this Casino ever again" he nodded this time.

"I expect nothing less. Our most gracious lord provides forgiveness." he paused "No matter how large that need be. Yet the evil burn in hell and the good are forgiven. To struggle is to purge the soul and to live forever" and with that he was gone. From down the hall I heard "I wonder where I can get some banana nut Ice cream".

The fucker, What was all this holly roller crap? The man was full to the Gunwales of shit, I should have made him squeal, that would have gotten rid of all this good and evil bull. I knew he had jumped under the wheels of all this New Canaanite none sense but what had just happened wasn't real. What more I knew more of good and evil than he did. You can only know true good when you have been fully arm deep in the guts of evil and only then could you have the freedom to be deep in benevolence. Most people alive don't really know what it is, can only nip at the edges of it. Then do you actually realise what good is; it is what is right; and what is right is what I want. To quote Machiavelli "It is better to be feared that loved". On the surface that means what it says, but in actuality it means is that good is something that is only a subset of evil.

Tiring of this thinking; it ages the body you know it mustn't be done too often, I stamped on the table splintering the wood and making it sag in the middle. What did I need, what did I need to make this bloody headache of thinking escape me?

I knew, I needed my girl. I proceeded to go and cover the burns that traveled my arms and hands that had become a sanguine red. Thinking my thoughts of my girl and when my good fortune would come around.

Rising From A Thousand Thrones

I walked out of the Casino with my girls body in my hand, the golden skin of her rested cooly against my palm. She rarely said anything, yet when she did she commanded attention of anyone that heard her. Her words singing out in short bursts. With other people being about I used our own form of telepathy to ask her "Are you ready?". She merely glinted in response. Smiling I walked across the pavement, but in a moment of inspiration I turned and said.

"Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West,

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest."

Turning to the Lucky 38

"There shrines and palaces and towers

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

Resemble nothing that is ours."

Then looking upwards

"Around, by lifting winds forgot,

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie."*

Then, done with that, like a Follower surgeon who snaps on gloves I buried my hands in my pockets and dipped my

head, with my girl at my side.

* * *

Hampton Wicks*: Rhyming Slang for dicks

Ginola Disorder*: Rhyming Slang for Bi-Polar Disorder

"The Melancholy Waters Lie" (This is actually encompasing the entire poem)* This is the first Stanza of the Edgar Allen Poe poem 'The City In The Sea'

_Hello! I hope you liked this first half of this short story of mine. As a given this will be released in two halfs and the second half should be uploaded shortly after this. Something quite unusual for me. Anyway, if anybody should be interested Surprisingly Odd; Author of Two To The Head: A Courier Six Novel, and Myself will soon start a collection of flash fiction (On Fallout) so keep an eye out for that if you are a fan of her. Oh, for some reason the under linings, spacing and divider had disappear. Hopefully they are back but If they disappear again please say so in a review or PM. Thanks!_


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